About

Hi all that come by this. This blog will be about the projects i finished or are in the making for the Unreal Tournament game series.

I thought that starting by how i got where i am now should be the way to go for the first post, so here we go. Keep in mind i didn’t had any internet access until around 2006 and nothing reliable until a couple of years ago (!).

I learnt everything i know on the Unreal editor until late 2008 when i got the Collector’s edition of UT3.
Sadly most of my work is no more because of hardrive dying at some time, and i didn’t upload anything until 2013.

Enjoy the read 😉I’ve seen this too many times during my first months playing the game.

UT99

I started playing Unreal tournament in early 2000 if i’m not wrong by finding the Gotye box on my local supermarket and was all excited. Was there really a game where i could fight against ia in insane arenas? It obviously couldn’t be true, but the game was cheap and it was one of the rare games that could run on my computer at the time (Pentium 166Mhz MMX !, with 2Gb Hard drive and 32Mo Ram, yeah it was awesome in 1995). Once installed (took me around 3 hours as my CD-Reader was agonizing) and running, i was really happy to have been wrong and getting the game anyway. DeathMatch, woo :D. No sound, 320×240 fullscreen with half the screen in a black border, all details to 0, the loadings were super long but that was just freaking awesome.
3 arenas in the Campaign later, it crashes (i figured later my CD-Reader derped and lots of files were corrupted). Wait i can play again the same 3 maps, that’s not a problem.
2 weeks later i reinstalled, no corrupted files and with sound this time. Best game ever, Assault, Domination were my favorites at the moment. Something like 2 months later i find Practice session in the menu, and there are new maps there, plus new modes (ChaosUT, InstaGib, Fatboy, Volatile ammo yeay).

A couple of months later i find the editor while messing in the folders. Looks like i can open all the maps in there, hey there’s a secret Invisibility in turbine. Then i did something and i moved around the invisibility. Wait a second, is that an editor, like in which i can change the maps as i want, this got to be the best game ever. And it was indeed 😉
I didn’t know how the thing worked and i was young, but damn i wanted to make it work. The first tutorials i ever read about the editor were those in the Bonus DVD of UT3’s Collector edition in late 2008. I learnt everything by myself before that, and it felt great to find something new, or how to use properly (i think) some of the features (2D Shape editor, i miss it).
It was the start of many hours spent messing around with the buttons to get a change i could play with.
I found first that i could change the textures and save, and the game would work. Here we go HyperBlast-Alien, Malevolence-2 and more.
And then i found the Build button. 😀 Jackpot.

I was just starting my venture inside this great Engine and Game series.

I did around 4-5 maps for each Unreal Tournament generation, but started to release some of my work just recently (because of internet access and quality of work :p)

Because of HD dying and other stuff i don’t have much stuff left, or i would have post some pictures for giggles.

For what i remember of it in UnrealEd 2.0 i made :

DM-HyperBlast-Alien. I don’t remind much about it apart it was unplayable because of the texture choices. And that there was some kind of liana in the corridor to get in the bottom part and Escape pods down there.

DM-Malevolence-2 with a Castle theme. It looked awful.

DOM-Condemned-2 with day theme (looked great at the time) and some weird changes, like an Amp inside the condemned part that was accessible with translocator.

CTF-Pressure with a copypasta of sorts of the map and the flags at each end of the now doubled-in-size central corridor.

Maybe some others but i don’t remember.

UT2004

The Game didn’t work at first on my computer but i could access and mess with the editor. How hard i wanted to play after seeing some of the maps.
When i finally could play it it was awesome, but damn the maps were huuuge. Played it a lot nonetheless. The campaign was insane (Bloodrites !) and Lauren was an OP Bot. And then Malcolm in the face haha, i died so much in th final map. And the remakes were great to play, bringing memories back.

UnrealEd 3.0 work I remember of :

DM-Malevolence-2005, with a High tech style (think of 2004 Hyperblast).

ONS-Dawn-Battle. It was a vehicle-deathmatch of sorts. Only one central node, everybody locked in the central valley with vehicle on both sides. Bloodbath in the water on the center. It was a reaaly bad idea and had a really bad realisation but it was incredibly fun.

A set of Custom characters with modified Brock armor and team colors. I think it’s my best texture work to this time and i’m really sad to don’t have them anymore.

DDOM-Condemned3, Egyptian theme.

And then my first map from scratch : DM-TarsonisStation (or whatever was the name of the main Confederate’s planet in Starcraft). It looked insane (totally worth to be in the shipped game look-wise with some custom textures and all) but the layout was crap as hell. RCR-fest, Pickups balance throwed to garbage and all sort of stuff like that. It became better with time but the RCR was still awful.

Some time later the Internet happens, and i’m flooded with new maps. In the end i spent more time Downloading new thing than playing them. Except maybe DM-KillBillyBarn (?) in TDM with 3 Smith agents against loads of Martians from Mars Attack (Which was so OP with Racial traits mutator), DM-Niflheim and DM-Tydal.
I did basically the same for UT99 not much later but played a lot more than i downloaded this time.

And one late November 2008 Day when looking around in my favorite Tech/book store i stumble upon UT3, and i’m like that can’t be true i didn’t even heard of it, sure my UT2004 playing pals should had known about it, but no they didn’t. That’s how bad the UT3 Marketing was done and how rushed the game had been.

UT3

The Collector was at the same price that the normal for whatever reason and was cheap as hell (20€ at the time) so i take it.
Launch the game, uggh the menu, where are my settings ? How do i set up a custom match in this.
The campaign was not a tournament for whatever reason (and F.L.a.G.s) so i didn’t played it more than 3-4 matches.

The first impression was not good to say the least, and it ran so bad on my computer that i figured soon enough why i didn’t heard about this game and why it was that cheap. But there’s an editor nonetheless, and i have some video tutorials by Epic’s themselves.
After watching the series, i’m quite pumped up to make a map, Materials are cool to use, and the game looks nice despite of being dark and cluttered and the gameplay feels really good passed the menu on the right map.

DM-Malevolence2008 Minigun

So here we go :

DM-Malevolence-2008, with ripped-off deco from the new CTF-Coret and DM-HeatRay.
Once finished it was the best map i ever did, with night rain and random thunder/Lightning done with kismet and like 10 thousands timers, it looked like a sci-fi slum-market (think cyberpunk).
And there were no blocking volumes and lots of things to get stuck on. But it was the best map of the game for me and my old 2004 pals. And it ran smooth enough for a while.

CTF-Grendelkeep2, Necris style. It ran quite bad and had the same issues than Malevolence, and than all the base maps. It had never been released and never will be, there’s one Low-poly version already if i’m correct so it’s not worth the time.

Later i found about Blocking volumes and it was a bit better but still …

DM-Malevolence2008 Rox

I downloaded some of the first maps ever released in this game (i remind a ctf undersea) but let the game for a moment because there were too few new maps and not enough in the base game.

A month later i decide to throw the looks and do a Map that run at 60fps.
DM-Malevolence again, but this time BSP and trims everywhere, clean/bright look, Daytime, custom StalwartXL from UT99 textures from a friend. HOLP Style, even though i wouldn’t even know about this until 2011. Too bad i didn’t uploaded it at the time. It perhaps could have boost the game and inspire mappers and players of the awesomeness of the game. Meh, it’s too late now anyway.

UT3’s phoenix rising

Then late 2011 with a new computer for me and most of my old 2004 lan friends, i decide to check UT3 because we started to grow bored of UT99/2004. HOLP/UOF/CBP/COMP/Mapmixer happend in the meantime, i think Titan patch aswell. And i’m hook again. Maps the same way i like them (HOLP ftw), 60 fps and good menu.

-Guys we need to play this again.
-Ok, bud, update your malevolence a bit and we’re going to frag.

COMP taught me DM-Edge was the duel map i prefered at the moment and Cr4zy had released the texture pack so why not.

DM-Malevolence-LP Rox

Here goes the DM-Malevolence2011 that i released in beta during 2013.

A few weeks later the first version of DM-Maliwan that was not called like that and was not the same architecture and look (it was Arcane-Temple style with the texture pack used in DM-Chizra), but after lots of changes it became DM-Maliwan. It was again an attempt at a from scratch map, but went far better this time, thanks to the Theory of Map flow.

And the Tron Character which we used to replace skins via UTComp forced skins.

In 2013 i started to release some of my work, first with the beta of DM-Malevolence2011 that had been called DM-Malevolence-LP for the final.

DM-Maliwan

Then the beta of DM-Maliwan which is on its second stage and should hit final later this year.

And soon a remake of DM-Viridian-TOURNEY with a custom old-school looking Liandri texture pack that i’ll release when finished.